Patent applications entitled xe2x80x9cRestoration of Data Backed up on Archive Mediaxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cBacking up Computer Dataxe2x80x9d, Redundant Storage of Computer Dataxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9cHierarchical Performance Systemxe2x80x9d filed by me concurrently herewith, are incorporated herein by reference.
The invention relates to mirroring computer data stored on a host computer storage disk.
One way to automatically provide backup of data on a computer system is by mirroring. It is known to implement mirroring on a desktop computer by having a disk driver that does all writes to two disks which thus have identical images of the stored data in the event of catastrophic failure of one disk. If one disk fails, the complete image of the data on the other disk can be accessed.
In one aspect, the invention features, in general, a computer having capabilities for backing up data to a remote archive repository. The computer includes the usual components of an interpreter (e.g., a file system or a database application that does physical to logical mapping), a host storage disk, and a host storage driver for the host storage disk. In addition the computer includes a mirror system having a disk driver interface to the interpreter and a remote procedure call interface to a remote archive repository. The mirror system sends the write requests and the data to be written from the interpreter to the host storage driver and to the remote archive repository.
In another aspect the invention features in general a computer system including a plurality of desk top computers that are connected to a network to which a remote archive repository is connected. The computers each have a mirror system as has already been described and send copies of data to be backed up to the common remote archive repository.
In another aspect the invention features in general a computer implemented method of backing up data to a remote archive repository. An interpreter on the computer maps logical user write requests to physical block level write requests. A mirror system having a disk driver interface to the interpreter and a remote procedure call interface to a remote archive repository sends the write requests and data to be written to a host storage driver for writing on a host storage disk and to the remote archive repository.
In another aspect the invention features a computer program that resides on a computer-readable medium and includes instructions causing the computer to create a mirror system as has already been described.
Certain implementations of the invention may include one or more of the following features. In certain implementations: the mirror system includes a mirror driver and an archive media system, the mirror driver providing the disk driver interface and also having an operating system device driver application programming interface to the archive media system, the archive media system being implemented in the user space of the computer and communicating with the remote archive repository; the remote archive repository includes a control program, disk storage, and a tape library.
Embodiments of the invention may have one or more of the following advantages. Mirroring is provided for a computer without the need to add hardware or backup software. The remote archive repository can be shared by a large number of computers. The approach is portable across different vendors"" implementations of an operating system and different operating systems.
Other advantages and features of the invention will be apparent from the following description of a preferred embodiment thereof and from the claims.